WikiLeaks V: Spying on the UN — Et Tu, Obama Administration?

We’re honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the fifth in the series.

As eye-opening revelations concerning international diplomacy begin to pour out from the Wikileaks document dump, it is increasingly clear that the administration of Barack Obama will have a massive public relations mess to clean up. The latest scandal: Hillary Clinton ordered American diplomats to spy on top officials in the United Nations, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton’s name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.

The operation targetted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington’s main intelligence agencies. The CIA’s clandestine service, the US Secret Service and the FBI were included in the “reporting and collection needs” cable alongside the state department under the heading “collection requirements and tasking”.

Of course, spying is hardly a new phenomenon in Turtle Bay. The National Security Agency, among other groups, was caught spying on Security Council members in 2003, and was accused of tapping the phone of then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Still, this latest episode will surely complicate matters between the world body and an Obama administration eager to mend the strained relations engendered during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The leaked cables reveal a wide-range of US interest in UN matters.

Washington wanted intelligence on the contentious issue of the “relationship or funding between UN personnel and/or missions and terrorist organisations” and links between the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah. It also wanted to know about plans by UN special rapporteurs to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and “details of friction” between the agencies co-ordinating UN humanitarian operations, evidence of corruption inside UNAids, the joint UN programme on HIV, and in international health organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). It even called for “biographic and biometric” information on Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of WHO, as well as details of her personality, role, effectiveness, management style and influence.

But cables reveal that the spying orders were not only issued for missions within the headquarters on Second Avenue. The Guardian reports further that

In one directive that would test the initiative, never mind moral and legal scruples, of any diplomat, Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups.

The Obama administration seemingly wanted information on matters of less global strategic import as well. In one example,

Washington also wanted to know about “corruption among senior officials, including off-budget financial flows in support of senior leaders … details about defence industry, including plans and efforts to co-operate with foreign nations and actors. Weapon system development programmes, firms and facilities. Types, production rates, and factory markings of major weapon systems”.

So far no comment has been issued from the Secretary-General’s office, nor any of the other agencies affected by US espionage.

Michael Busch, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, teaches international relations at the City College of New York and serves as research associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is currently working on a doctorate in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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